Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present.

... the truth is exactly that which can't be got into words. We are forced to lie, a little or, if we are inferior, much.

Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow.

The critic's hankering to be law-giver rather than servant of literature is irrepressible.

The young are so much more vulnerable than the old - the stuff is still warm and malleable, it takes impressions.

You can't argue with a raging want. You can, but it is useless.

Language is one of the thin walls humanity has built up over centuries against its own bestial and destructive impulses.